Happiness and purpose

Many of us think that happiness is the true purpose of life- at least many of the atheists. For theists, the purpose would generally be to serve God by performing duties while being thankful through prayers. Duties can range from selfish needs at worst, to kids' needs, friends and relatives needs, mankind's needs and in the best case scenario, the whole environment's needs. By best I mean best in my opinion, and not at any objective level. Anyway, for most atheists, the purpose to life can be a but murky. For fans of evolution, there's the theory that love for your species is the purpose to one's life. Love for mankind needn't only be shown through charity and in most cases should not be (as I talked about in the post- "The right way to treat a person"). Focusing on selfish or family level interests are probably a good idea and this generally makes other families and individuals focus on themselves and make the whole world better. There are exceptions to the rule that self-interest promotes overall group interests, but in an environment where the judicial system is well structured- i.e our actions are governed by a set of rules that ensure that self interest does not lead to detrimental consequences at a larger level, things should be fine. For instance, it might be of self-interest for a guy to shoot his boss, but then that would cause chaos that is beyond acceptability, and would bring down mankind in the long run, and so it is unlawful to do so.

Whatever be the aim of a person, it can by hypothesised that the aim can be simplified to happiness, because his aim in life when fulfilled, should give him happiness. This takes care of the problem of having an aim that is not aligned with one's values as well. A person who has an aim of educating the world- but without believing in the cause, would not get much happiness in doing so. So, a person who has the right set of values and morals can bring good to the world if he tries to make himself happy. He may become happy by helping the underpriviledged or by making himself rich.

I'd like to categorise happiness and long and short term happiness. Short term happiness includes the happiness you get by doing thing like watching a movie or going out with friends or just sitting around and doing nothing. I''ll refer to short term happiness simply by the word 'happiness'. Long term happiness is a result of all your past actions and it's something that is much stronger and more meaningful- and I'll refer to this as 'purpose'. By stronger I mean that it cannot be taken away from you easily- you cant make Mr. Barrack Obama sad by telling him that he wasted his life away. But you could make him sad by taking away his sandwich when he's really hungry. It's more meaningful because you can't fool yourself with purpose. You can be happy by not doing homework but it doesn't give you any tangible benefits. The feeling of purpose can be achieved only by achieving things in the long run. But is this a rule?

Well, I wouldn't think so. In a famous experiment, people who lost their limbs and people who won lotteries went back to similar levels of general happiness a few months after the respective incidents. It's not uncommon to see very poor people or beggars who are very happy with their lives while MNC CEOs or top actors may not be happy with theirs. In this case, happiness comes down to meeting your expectations. The feeling of accomplishment (which I earlier called purpose) can be achieved even by not doing much but believing that you are actually doing enough. According to Dan Gilbert, people have this unique capability to synthesise happiness, and this happiness is not in any way inferior to the happiness you get when you get the things you desire. Synthesising happiness consists of being satisfied with who you are. People like Buddha figured this out long back and suggested people to not desire things. This would help them synthesise happiness but then it's not very meaningful when you synthesise purpose, is it? Anyway according to Gilbert, there are two kinds of happiness and this is a different way of looking at the same problem- the happiness you get from getting things you want and the happiness you get by being satisfied with what you have.

So what do you do now? Well my suggestion is to go for a mixture of happiness and purpose and leave the synthesis of happiness to its natural ways. And by the way, the reason why people may marry spouses who are rich and succesful and organised is to help with their feeling of purpose. This might be compromise on happiness (short-term) if the person is boring to hang out with. It must be remembered that happiness and purpose are to a large extent independent and a healthy combination of both are required for a happy, succesful life. A slight tilt towards purpose would probably help, though.

Gesamkuntzberg

 I've always wondered why video games are a lot more entertaining than movies or music or other forms of art. When I was younger, I used to watch very few movies and listen to not much music, while playing copious amounts of video games- which started with a handheld device which had only Tetris and a crappy racing game and then a Nintendo which obviously had Mario and other games, and then a PC when I was 10, which gave me games like Lionking, Aladdin and Skyroads. It's been a long journey since then and I've learnt a lot of things on the way and I've several favourites including Alpha Centauri, Portal, Civilisation II, Fallout 3, DOTA etc.- all from different genres.

The video by MrBtongue which talks about Dark Souls gives a satisfactory explanation for this. Videogames are a Gesamtkunstwerk, or a 'total art form' which makes use of several forms of art to combine them into a single experience. Movies are also a Gesamtkunstwek and they combine things like background score, acting, the story etc. to create a form of art that is superior to the score, acting or story taken separately. Movies have evolved so much over time that things like editing and direction can also be considered to require artistic inputs. Anyway the final result is more than a sum of its parts. Listening to the score of Star Wars, looking at the special effects, looking at the acting, reading the story etc separately does not give you the same experience as watching a movie. Videogames however take it to the next level. There are several additional elements that a game provides. Firstly, it puts the story from a protagonists point of view really effectively compared to a movie since you play the protagonist (I'm talking about action shooters and RPGs in games and movies which have a clear protagonist). Secondly, they let you create your own story and characters. Several games allow player interactions to affect the story. For instance in Mass Effect 2, which can actually be started with a savegame file from Mass Effect 1 to make sure that your character choices are taken into account during the 2nd game- allows you to die in the end if the player does not provide things like providing enough protection to the protagonist's spaceship. This actually kills off the character at the end of the game and thus makes it impossible to export the savegame to Mass Effect 3, which would've be possible if he had survived. Games like Mass Effect give several choices in game to make sure that the story is personalised and that the protagonist behaves in a way that you want him to (and ideally how you would if you were him/her). This mechanic also allows for higher replayability of the game since you can play the entire game with totally different choices and get a new experience- but let's talk about replayability later. Thirdly and most importantly, there is a completely new experience that games provide as compared to movies- the gameplay mechanic. Gameplay mechanic is so crucial to games that all games are classified according to the mechanic and not the type of story that it tells. This is unlike the case in movies and storybooks which are classified according to the story. Games can be First-person-shooters or platformers or Role Playing Games even if they tell a science fiction story. Portal and Mario are both platformers which have absolutely nothing in common in terms of the theme and story. There are very rare cases where the method of storytelling is used to classify books - the choose your adventure type of book falls into this category. Classifying movies as silent, colour/black and white etc. also are parallels to the classification given to games.

So how good are games anyway? I would go to the extent of saying that unless something else comes up, they are the next generation medium for entertainment. One problem with games is that they are not as easily accessible as movies, and while someone who's never seen a movie before would be able to enjoy it, several games are difficult to appreciate or even play, if the person has had no prior experience playing games of that type. GTA 5 racked in 1 billion $ revenues in its 1st four days of release- much faster than any movie ever. This is in spite of the fact that the game hasn't yet been released on the PC and also the issue of accessibility, which I expect would reduce in the future. Companies like Microsoft and Sony realise that gaming is the next big thing and at least till the consoles a couple of generations back (Xbox and PS2) used to sell them at a loss to just get the market share and ensure that they aren't left out of the race.

As of now however, games can't be called superior to movies. This is because movies have been with us for about a century and there have been so many innovations on the way and they have received a lot of attention. Television is also a competitor and provides more personalisation than movies and you get more choice as to what to watch. Youtube gives even more personalisation and I expect youtube and Netflix (or a similar video-streaming service) to directly replace TV as a superior option if it hasn't already-  at least in developed countries. Internet is again, not 100% available or accessible, partly because of speed and connectivity issues. Internet is a relatively young technology and I'm sure that TV would be eventually phased out. Coming to the areas where games aren't as good as movies- one particular point is how games often require a clear protagonist and you are forced to do things on his behalf (or act as a god and control many thing like in Age of Empires- either way you have an effect on the world). This means that you cannot be told a story that the storywriter wants to tell. You always have an effect of your own on the world and the story is not pure in the sense that it's not exactly the single story the storyteller wanted to tell. But then this is like a side-effect to the advantage that you get a personalised experience playing the game and that you have an impact on the world. There are however some games which encourage exploring the story and not really having a huge (and at times any) impact on the game itself. A significant example is the game called "Gone Home" where you (as a girl) explore your house after coming back after some time to find out where your family has gone. Clues and notes give you an idea in the end and your whole lifestory is told through several objects and books in the house. There are several audio clips as well, and the whole experience I have to say, is very unique and very touching. Another game that isn't exactly a story told to you- you do get a few choices and you explore the story through these choices is "The Stanley Parable" which is much more casual and I'm sure that games like The Stanley Parable have a great future. These games which illustrate the different ways in which videogames can be an art-form, are not exactly my favourite games, but they do take care of the criticism of having to write the story ourselves while playing a game. These games have a pre-decided story that you explore using the game environment. Which is interesting because many people do not actually consider them as games. I do, however and it is because of the highly interactive nature as compared to just choosing a clip to watch. Gone Home has you walk around the house and pick up objects and turn on and off the lights, read stuff etc. and it's not quite the same as reading a book or watching a movie. Yes, it doesn't have a clear gameplay mechanic but the interactive nature of the experience makes it a game. Interactivity I guess, can be called as the 4th unique thing about games and it's a lot more than choosing your own adventure in a book that allows you to do so. Replayability is another one at 5th, and there are several game which provide fresh experiences during replays. Strong examples are- playing different races or countries in games like Starcraft or Age of Empires, choosing the 'good' or 'bad' or 'neutral' karma options in games like Star Wars KotoR or Fallout or Elder Scrolls or indeed Mass Effect. I'm sure that there's a 6th and 7th but I'll stop here.

From economists' point of view there's a separate reason why games would be more popular and this is because it's easier to monetise games. People can easily pirate movies and enjoy them to a similar effect as in theatres (or heck, they can create a home theatre themselves) but there are several games which cannot be enjoyed without paying for them. This is especially true for consoles and this explains why developers are more interested in making games for consoles. A game like World of Warcraft is played online and the best thing about the game is that you can play it with your friends. Pirating the game is kind of pointless since playing it alone is just boring. Games would have to connect to Blizzard servers which would check if your game is authentic and thus make it really difficult to pirate such games. Elder Scrolls online is an upcoming game which is expected to sell majorly and has a similar mechanic. Some games which have a single player experience like Diablo 3 need internet connection to work (even for single player) and crackers have found it difficult to disable this requirement. In any case, even without the monetisation reason, games would be incredibly superior as a form of entertainment, to movies in a few decades time (though they are already very superior in my opinion).

Video on Gesamtkuntzberg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIx7Ot5Mq2Q‎

Good jobs and good wives

What's common between them? Well they're two things that the average MBA guy looks for, at least in India. The latter being mostly preferred in singular of course, but then I'm talking about the concept in general and hence the topic is thus.

People have different tastes and passions and it's difficult to formulate a common code for a 'good' job. However I remember a lecture by some Indian entrepreneur gone abroad who said that the best job is at the intersection of three sets- Makes Money, Passion and Skill. A job which is balanced among these three things is according to him an ideal job. Although there are exceptions and he himself was one he admitted, since he had earned enough to move to the intersection of the latter two and money was no longer an issue. For me personally, jobs can to a certain extent be objectively evaluated. Not all jobs can be of course. But the same way I believe there is a certain objectivity to ethics in spite of cultural heterogeneity and so on, I do think that some jobs are better. Passion plays a part and people with a strong passion for something would naturally have a tendency to do something related to that. Apart from the three factors above, there's value addition which I consider as very important. Now the job of a sweeper is not a very high value added job since he does not do much to change the world. Yes, the world would be dirtier without him and if all sweepers decided not to sweep, the world might even come to an end but a practical argument would say that he doesn't add as much value as say a banker and thus his job is worse. I'm not saying that he is a lesser person or that he's doing a bad job. This is just a way of analysing jobs from the value addition point of view. Value addition is not always translated into higher salaries due to inefficiencies in the labour market, but it is a fair approximation to use salaries to measure the amount of value addition. So by this analysis, the Federal Reserve chairman or the president of the US or the CEO of Facebook should be the best jobs in the world right? Well, no. No, because apart from the fact that the three criteria mentioned earlier (as sets) may not be satisfied at all, you may be too lazy to work hard enough for these jobs. These jobs require full time dedication and you may not be able to provide it. Not that you're not capable but you may just not be interested enough or may be, just may be you're too lazy (which can be a good thing as I've written before). Which is fine by the way and again it doesn't make you a lesser person. As long as you bring something unique to the world, your contribution is important and the sweeper's contribution although not as much in value addition terms as the president's, is a contribution nevertheless, and it is particularly important to follow your passion as well since other people may not share the same passion as you and thus may not find working in your profession as satisfying as you do.

A good wife for me is both fun and dependable. Now the following paragraph should seem tasteless to the average reader but I'll go on anyway. Fun implies many things including looks, smartness, intelligence, knowledge, wit as well as talent in any field. Naturally, fun can be the only criterion for someone as well, especially people who are highly fun themselves. High achievers may not look for anything other than these qualities. But I know that I'm not going to be successful forever and thus I would definitely need some support at times. This is measured by the dependability of the woman. Highly dependable women can be trusted; they can empathise with you and they care for you. A right balance of both would be perfect. Now you may ask how I can arbitrarily classify something like good looks or money into fun even though they have nothing to do with the word. To be honest, I actually see both fun and dependability as a single quality. Like light, which dictates whether a room is dark or well lit. Dark and well lit are two states which are governed only by the presence of light. Let us make dependability the only criterion now. People who are highly rich or people who are extremely good looking are generally not dependable in the sense that they may be dissatisfied with you. Of course most of these things are generalisations and won't be true always but as any student of economics (or ay other inexact science) will know, you don't have to be always right and in fact you never will be when talking about things like this- but that doesn't reduce the importance of an opinion that covers the general trend. Now fun and dependability are not the right words to use I realise now and something along the lines of order and chaos would be the right terms. This is true in the case of the economy as well. A certain degree of order is required but without innovation (chaos), the economy becomes stagnant, and well...dies off. A human life also needs a certain balance of both. Childish philosophies like libertarianism preach only chaos and this leads to things like the sub-prime crisis once a while where everything goes hay-wire. I personally cannot stand such a large amount of hay-wireness and thus prefer some order as well. Alan Greenspan's policies, if they were translated into our wife-analysis language would be called 'shallow' since it looks for highly successful, rich and good-looking women much the same way the capitalist system encourages the rich to become richer.

Laziness

Slightly off topic to start with- I got a pleasant surprise to see Mrs. Travers tell the Disney guys in the movie Saving Mr. Banks (saw it last Sunday) that parents should not sugarcoat everything for their kids. Her childhood flashback was brilliantly done in the movie and shows how a father with endless love fails to fulfill the expectations of his child (by struggling at earning money and finally drinking and dying) but in the end she is most affected by his words and actions though by the time she realises the importance of her dad's way of life, it's a little too late.

Back to the topic, laziness is something that has intrigued me a lot because it seems to serve no purpose for man and there is no clear reason as to why people are still lazy in spite of millions of years of evolution. Perhaps there's more to laziness than meets the eye. To be honest, laziness has always come naturally to me, right from childhood! I've never really bothered to do more than I'm supposed to, although at a certain phase of my life, I was pretty much supposed to top the class. As the supposition faded away, so did my hardworking nature, and it reached a trough during my engineering days when playing online games was one of the main things that could be even remotely considered as work.

More recently, I'd come to the conclusion that laziness is similar to cheating or dishonesty. It's not exactly the same thing of course but then when you're being lazy and not studying as a student, you are in a way cheating yourself and your parents, as well as your future spouse and kids. An air traffic controller, by being lazy for a few minutes can cause the death of hundreds or even thousands. Thus it could be said that laziness is in an indirect way, a sin. But this is a very childish way of looking at things. Laziness among other things, leads to creativity since man has always tried to make his work easier through inventions. It also leads to better leadership and management skills as he tries to delegate work, which in turn results in the work getting done more efficiently. I would go to the extent of saying that laziness and rebellion are some of the things that define human beings (though not definitive as sense of humour) and that all normal human beings would have these to some extent. Properly managed laziness can be crucial, thus.

But the most important aspect about laziness I feel- which is consistent even with evolutionary needs is that people are prepared to do insane amounts of work just so that they can laze around later on. Very often, people who work their asses off throughout their prime-days are in fact preparing themselves for a calm and relaxed end to their life. For the average person, studying hard for an exam is also partly motivated by the chilling out and 'doing nothing'ness that follows after it's done.

Aand I guess I'm too lazy to write more :D

The right way to treat a person

Wise men say that you should treat others the way you want to be treated. And I agree with these men mostly. So then it comes down to how I would want to be treated. To be honest, I've been spoon-fed quite a lot through my childhood and it was a bit of a shock for me when I had to do pretty much everything myself as a got into engineering and of course the same continued into the MBA as well though the shock had worn off by then. I've come to accept the reality that it is not a very unique wish to want to be rich or to marry a hot girl or to have the good life. Well, not that I'm crazy about it but these are indeed things I like. And I do of course want to compete and do well in difficult fields. Now, I'm not quite a McKinsey guy or anything- I'm just a normal guy so when I say these things it's not that I'm doing much towards it. That is a completely different story. Being a normal guy, I have normal levels of laziness. Which is a lot. Anyway, coming back to wanting a good life, pretty much everyone wants it except for some saintly people who for all we know realised halfway through their lives that they couldn't get it and then decided not to want it. Kittatha Munthiri Pulikkum (translates roughly to "The grapes you cant get seem sour"). Thu these things don't come easy since competition is pretty high. And with high competition, you can expect people to try and beat you at everything, everyday. Being lied to or being cheated upon are not uncommon and indeed expected out of your average competitor. This doesn't mean I've done it; but I can understand why someone would want to do these things.

And so with very little expectations from people, I've realised that just by treating me fairly a person is doing me a huge favour. Fairly means that I can trust the person to be himself and treat me as an average guy in his position would treat an average guy in my position. This isn't just because of my lowered expectations either. See, my parents and relatives treated me extremely well throughout my childhood and gave me plenty of freebies and I never had a tension in the world. But that's probably not what I would've ideally wanted. A more realistic picture of the world could've been obtained by me much earlier in life had my parents treated me like an average guy, leaving me with just honest parenting as an expectation. I'd have to do my clothes and clean stuff and maintain the house and what not. The only favour that parents should be doing for their kids is to treat them fairly. To let them grow and give them enough resources such as food and shelter to let them choose a life for themselves and help them attain it by providing support. Things such as love and emotional support are indeed very important but doing too many things for your kids might have unintended consequences.

There's another issue as well and that is the issue of sustainable behaviour. I talked about how it is good to be treated fairly and now something about you treating others fairly (apart from the advantage the person gets because of the reason stated above). For how long can you put up fake manners with another person? Things are so much easier when you act naturally. Natural, open and honest (as much as possible) behaviour is the biggest favour you can do to anyone. Don't put up fake manners (except when required- when meeting clients for instance) and don't give freebies to people. Don't take a beggar into your house and give him a grand meal. Tell him to get a job and feed himself. Else you would only ruin him and he would just search for other households or even come back for more. Can you feed every beggar on the street in the same way? When are you going to stop? With 10,15...100 beggars? Even then you may have a doubt- Am I doing enough charity? Can't I do more for them? Some wise man said this as well- Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish and you know.. he can eat a lot. Not 100% relevant here but I hope you get the link. Life becomes so much simpler and simplicity of this philosophy is indeed one of its attractions but I do believe that it's the right thing to do as well- that's what I've learnt from my life so far. The best people are the ones that insult you on your face and crack jokes on your face.

Risk-return profiles, IT and passion

I've wondered at times why so many Indians go along the path of engineering and medicine (and may be a law or commerce as well these days- exceptions to these are almost entirely people who aren't capable of doing well in these fields), at least relative to the developed countries. Now it's not just India to be fair. Most developing countries see a large number of people focusing on things like school and college education while disregarding arts, sports and so on. Isn't it strange that we have highly intellectual and skilled people (though the ratio to overall population is a bit sad) capable of making movies or playing football or just painting stuff yet they don't do it? Developing countries are miles behind developed ones in terms of science and infrastructure but light years behind in terms of art. There isn't even an effort. One easy explanation would be that poorer people cannot afford to play music or play football or whatever. The real reason could be a mixture of complicated things including our tradition. For instance, countries in South America do in fact give a lot more attention to music and football and a lot of cultural stuff and we Indians have our sole cricket- which among chess and ISRO are among the few things that gives the nation pride (along with times when Indians are recognised by the western media- latest being Satya Nadella). Careers in arts (lets' club all non-conventional careers into this word for convenience) are significantly riskier than the conventional ones and Indians seem to be far more risk averse than say a Brazil or a South Africa.

First thing for me is the influence of parents and the Indian social fabric. We are surrounded by relatives, friends, relatives of friends and so on who generously bestow upon us their endless wisdom. Only that this wisdom has a problem. The advice consists not just of things that they did and wished to do but also things they've seen others do. It's generally a bunch of nonsense that no human being can ever do. Except friends advice which is generally way to far on the other side and tells you- don't work, play, party, booze etc! Now, older people naturally tend to be more risk averse and they would've seen the risk-return profile of several career paths. When I'm talking about the risk of a career path, I'm talking about the risk of getting educated (formally and informally) in a subject, intending to work in a related field. For example, doing a B.Tech in IT. And for the uninitiated, a risk-return profile is a set of values for risk and return and in this case, time and effort are the main resources being invested. For example, a person spending a lot of time learning the guitar would undoubtedly be good at it but then he may not be creative enough to earn a living out of it. It's a high risk-high return investment compared to getting an engineering degree and it may not give you the same average returns as an engineering graduate (this is just an example and I think that a guitarist would actually get on an average lesser returns than an engineering graduate in India. Film or politics might be better suited as high risk- high return investments) . Now it's difficult to objectively say which investment is better than the other even if we know the risk and return of both investments exactly. This is because different people have different utility functions. For example, an individual might prefer stock A which gives 20% average returns with 10% risk (risk here is standard deviation of returns) over stock B which gives 18% returns with only 8% risk. Close calls can go either way and it's all up to individual preference. But bring in a stock C which gives 25% returns at 5% risk and all (sane) individuals would pick C over the other two. On an average, I think engineering jobs and especially those in IT give the best risk adjusted returns since the risk is very low- you'll almost surely get hired and returns are good compared to traditional engineering fields; at par and possibly superior to them. Thus if all individuals wanted to maximise their money, in my opinion they've to get IT jobs. But we know that not everyone does it and that is indeed partly why IT remains so attractive. This could be because (A) people have different perspectives and some may agree and also some may disagree with me and even if I were right, it may not even be possible to measure the risk and returns of any career path  OR a far more interesting (B) people do not want to maximise their money in the long run.

Option (B) seems right by intuition and should be a common case. Individuals do not think long-term and often are happy with short-term rewards. Watching a movie or playing a game gives instant pleasure compared to reading a book which (for me) is not as rewarding.  But this only covers what we call laziness. It doesn't talk about a Sachin who didn't study much and decided to play cricket or an A.R.Rahman who decided to compose music. They were not lazy- they just put their efforts into something they liked. Something they were passionate about. Passion is the most sensible answer to the question -why don't people want to earn maximum money. Sachin and Rahman are obviously rich as well but I'm sure that they were not looking for money in the first place, when they initially invested their time. Passion can make your utility function invalid and force you to take up careers which may be high risk and low return. Now passion could cover hobbies or even laziness. One could be passionate about sitting on beaches or travelling. Or just sitting idle. Theres a great amount of happiness and pleasure to be derived from a whole lot of activities and IT covers a miniscule part of the pie. I believe that each individual has a utility function which is unique and only he can know what makes him happy. This means that he would have to try out many things to find what he likes. Including doing nothing. This doesn't mean however that you should take no advice. In fact I'm a huge fan of taking advice. Once you've figured what to do, you can take advice from people on how to do it. Or if you've not figured out what to do yet, you can ask people for their experiences doing different things and choose for yourself what you want. There is however a problem here. As people grow up, their needs change. And almost always, egos become bigger as people grow older. I don't mean this in a bad way and feel that it is probably required for good parenting as well. To satisfy those egos, you've to be good at something. Really good. Or you can shrink your ego to make up for it but that's not a very natural thing to do as self-respect is a basic human need (though you can decide how much of it you want) like food or shelter. So when adults tell you to read and get a hig paying job, it's what they wish they'd done or what they did but it's from an ego-hungry point of view. Adult's needs are very different I feel and money and self esteem and a big family are most important.

So when you go behind your non-mainstream passion , make sure you do a decent job of it if you want to be an average adult with self-esteem and all and more importantly make sure that it falls within your required risk return profile. If you cant take failure don't try to be a movie star- unless of course you're that passionate about it. And a small tip when you don't know what to do- go for what's mainstream i.e. accepted by the public. If you're not sure between investment banking and wealth management go for wealth management because people say it's better and if you're confused between core jobs and IT jobs as a mechanical engineer, go for the core job- so long as you've no strong biases towards either. Do a degree in engineering even if you're interested in making games because the market is just not there. Again, unless you're that passionate about gaming in which case you derive enough pleasure from a low-paying low-profile job (you could be the exception and make it big but you would've taken a sufficiently high risk already-  which would be because of your passion for it in the first place). Something I've not considered in the entire analysis is talent and if you're really talented at say chess, it doesnt matter what anyone says, you can take it up and succeed (like say Magnus Carlsen) ; I'm just talking about the average human. I'm sure I would've left out many more things so you're always free to add new ones or criticise these in comments.

P.S: If you're not comfortable with risk and return, these are major things and almost always the only things that matter in assessing an investment. Let's assume that a share of ITC on an average (geometric mean, from the time it got listed) has given 20% returns annually with say 10% risk (stdev). While Kingfisher Airlines let us assume has given -50% returns with 25% risk. Here ITC is undoubtedly the better investment. Assuming of course that past values are indicative of future values which is in fact what we assume when choosing career paths- that we would get similar pay as our seniors or dad or whatever. It doesn't matter if someone who picked up journalism became really famous because he is just an exception. It doesn't matter if Kingfisher rose 100% in a month because that was an exception and on an average Kingfisher sucks compared to ITC. And similarly journalism would probably suck on average, in monetary terms (if an analysis is done considering all the people who tried to make it big in journalism) compared to an engineering job even though some exceptions are there.